We stopped by the Sprint booth again, for more pictures mostly (our first photo came out much worse than we thought). But, we also confirmed Sprint was planning to pick up Novatel’s upcoming ExpressCard EV-DO data card. Sprint was not able to confirm it would be Mac-compatible at launch, however, Novatel says there will be Mac support.

And, by request, here’s a shot of their EV-DO Rev A PC Card from Sierra.

We did show a shot from Sprint Central (the Sprint-owned Monorail station, acquired from Nextel). But, we forgot to mention that Sprint rolled out their own train for CTIA.

Sprint also offers free WiFi in their Wireless Lounge. Sprint was able to have a large presence at CTIA in part to the large amount of office space shrouded from public view at the expo.

Sega

Sega didn’t have much new on show, however, they did confirm a few details. First, House of The Dead Mobile is still in development. Second, it will be for both Java and BREW. Sega Mobile confirmed to PCS Intel that they plan for all games after HoTD (at least in 3D) to be released on both platforms. Sega did cite problems with 3D support in Java phones as the main delay, the BREW version was farther along as of this report.

We don’t have any photos of HoTD Mobile, so here’s some of House of The Dead 4. Want rumors about Sega? The PCS Intel Magic 8 ball clearly says “Ask Again Later”.

AOL

We’re not sure why AOL was at CTIA exactly. They announced nothing new, but did have the biggest booth in North Hall, so, we feel obliged to show you the booth.

Kyocera

Kyocera had some very low-end phones to demonstrate, but they also for the first time started showing their Japanese handsets at the show with the same emphasis. With UTStarcom reviving the Audiovox history of importing phones, it’s possible the W41 series could be the next on the import train… It also confirms reports that Kyocera actually can manufacturer high-end phones.

Kyocera also had on display a MediaFLO phone featuring a very thin design.

Hitachi

Hitachi did not have any phones on display, they did however demonstrate some UMPC sharing software and APIs. (Note: The UMPC was not on display at the Hitachi booth, it was a Sony U50, as shown below).

cool.Prepaid

Yes, cool.Prepaid was at the show. Yes, they had no phones. Yes, everyone that stopped at the booth made at least one joke about it. And, yes, the booth reps were very sick of it. However, there is news to report on the cool.Prepaid front. The MVNO made the silent announcement that they would now be carrying Sony Ericsson phones (as pictured below). They confirmed to PCS Intel that the phones were “on order”. This would make cool.Prepaid the only MVNO to carry unbranded Sony Ericsson phones in the United States, which could make them a popular means of selling SE phones for years to come.

Telmap

Telmap is an Israeli-based company that creates GPS apps. They have announced at CTIA that they will be handling the Mapquest Mobile application for release later this year. The application will be released on a broad range of devices, including BREW, Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Palm. It is arguably the most aggressive GPS app ever designed in terms of device support. We did manage to grab a picture of Mapquest Mobile running on a Sanyo MM-7400. Telmap also confirmed to PCS Intel that the application was currently under carrier approval with Sprint.

SimpleWire

This was the coolest thing at the show. It isn’t new, but still, wins the award for coolest thing at the show. SimpleWire has a SMS-enabled vending machine, and you could get a free soda by simply sending a text message to a short code. It was like living the old IBM ad where someone bought a soda by simply hitting a few buttons on the cell phone. Sure, you may have seen it before, but, this may be the thing that justifies pushing a can of coke past $1/can (inflation aside).

T-Mobile

T-Mobile had a couple of high-end upcoming phones on display. From the elite high-end Nokia 8801, to SLVR competing Samsung T509, T-Mobile promises their upcoming models will be more aggressively priced than the competition and both should be out next quarter.

Symbian

Symbian keeps letting us down. Year after year they say they’re working on CDMA, offer Feature Packs which rollup support, announce a phone manufacturer support CDMA Symbian, but no release of any U.S. CDMA Symbian phone. Symbian told PCS Intel at the expo that they’re “still working on it” with U.S. carriers.

Google Earth

Google Earth was on show at CTIA. With LBS an increasing buzzword, even Sprint got on board the “how do we make Google Earth mobile, using only a cell phone, and work with GPS?” train. Sprint was demonstrating Xora integration with Earth at the show, and we also looked at a couple of companies offering advanced Earth manipulation. RFMD was close, but Global Locate won the award for “best GE camera manipulation”.

Cingular & Verizon

Cingular already has UMTS operational in Las Vegas, and our experiences with it showed much better coverage than with the older AT&T Wireless network. Cingular did not have anything new to show at the expo. Verizon went even more barebones though; you could not even find a reference to “Verizon Wireless” anywhere, leaving the parent Verizon only to show floor space.

Palm

The news here is simple… the 700p was nowhere to be seen.

Microsoft

Microsoft had Vista on display, and also proved others in the media wrong by showing off the Q (this isn’t really coverage of the Q so much as knocking the competition for counting it out as a no-show at the expo). But the big buzz was actually in regards to Boot Camp over at the Vista area. Also, Microsoft mocked us once again with yet another HTC Universal device on display, this time from Qtek.

UTStarcom

Our UTStarcom booth photo was pretty poor in terms of angles, so, here’s a much better view of the whole booth…

MobiTV

At CTIA Fall ’03 we were told that MobiTV had no plans to enter the desktop mobile viewing arena. What a difference a couple of years makes. MobiTV now has available (and launched at CTIA) their desktop service. We’ll be reviewing an upcoming pre-release version of their Windows Mobile offering as well.

Intel

Intel had two big pushes, WiMax and UMPC. Both were in full force, and we wanted to show UMPC wear-and-tear as well as native performance. Also, Intel was prominently featured in the WiMax Forum Pavilion.

Conclusions?

We’re new. Still. The fact that “established” media was able to have complete coverage of upcoming phones where our cameras were completely shut out leaves us with many letters to write and phone calls to make. There clearly is a divide between companies that do recognize us and companies that do not. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to provide not just the most CTIA coverage, but coverage without complaints. Hopefully this should not be a problem by next year, at CTIA 2007 (Orlando).

On a final note, we’d like to thank the Sony CyberShot DSC-P200. We got this camera in the mail less than a day before flying to Vegas, and the camera performed well beyond our expectations. With ease-of-use and extremely fast speeds, this camera may not be the newest camera in the Sony lineup, but it certainly is one of the best cameras ever made.